Political committee keeps Obama birth certificate theory alive

WASHINGTON -- Still convinced President Obama wasn’t born in the United States?

A brand-new political committee will be happy to accept your donations to keep the theory alive.

The Conservative Majority Fund, set up a month ago by a political consultant, is sponsoring television ads that recycle some discredited conspiracy theories regarding Obama’s identity -- including suggestions that he’s using a phony Social Security number and a fake birth certificate.

“We know less about this man than any president in American history,” the ad says. “No one, I mean no one, has seen an actual physical copy of Barack Obama’s birth certificate.” It calls for a petition drive -- “we need 10,000 signatures from every congressional district” -- to boot Obama from the ballot.

The group’s website, which “demands Congress investigate Barack Obama’s forged birth certificate,” suggests donations from $25 to $2,500. This week, the group reported spending more than $500,000 to oppose “Barak [sic] Hussein Obama,” according to the organization’s Federal Election Commission filings, with most of the money going to a nationwide phone-call campaign.

The Conservative Majority Fund treasurer is Scott B. MacKenzie, a consultant with an address in an Arlington, Va., office building. MacKenzie is also treasurer of another PAC, Freedom’s Defense Fund, that in 2010 raised and spent nearly $3 million to help elect Republican candidates -- most of it from relatively small donors, reports show. More than $1.2 million of that group’s spending went to firms affiliated with Base Connect, a Washington political consulting outfit that lists MacKenzie as a “strategic partner.”